President Barack Obamas unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of insider threat give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for high-risk persons or behaviors among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States, says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

Funny how the Left encourage “Leakers” and Whistle Blowers” under Bush, and now the Left is actively seeking to silence them using any tactics. Libs, killing the free speech and constitution each and every day

TOTALITARIANSIM: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong. This is what McCain, McConnell, Alexander, Romney, Graham, Snowe, Collins, Boehner, Dole (both of them), and all the rest of the Lame Party have allowed to happen.

millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for high-risk persons or behaviors among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

Charges for failing to report?
It won’t be long before they institute this nation wide.

A man stops you on the street, shows you a federal badge
and says, “Are you with us Citizen?” then directs you
to some simple observation of your neighbor, then it’s
too late for you both.

This administration is the most threatening to American
freedoms and way of life I’ve ever seen!!!

Damned insanity.

21
posted on 06/21/2013 6:56:59 AM PDT
by tet68
( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)

information leaks are a problem in some agencies ~ not all agencies. in any case, there have always been rules in place regarding talking to the media bout agency business. with the Great Obama Recession still in place gub'mnt employees simply don't take risks.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more  we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

25
posted on 06/21/2013 6:58:30 AM PDT
by Chickensoup
(200 million unarmed " people killed in the 20th century by Leftist Totalitarian Fascists)

I know it is considered bad taste to bring up Hitler and his Nazi’s, but dammit this is what is happening here.

We are entering a Nazi State.

People required to pimp on Friends. The Government controlling Health care, Corruption. Secrets not of the State, but of the Administration and it’s crooked dealings. The IRS taking over Obamacare. Punishing whistleblowers.

You know, after reading that I’m more convinced that Snowden is a plant and his actions are merely an Obama scheme designed to justify a clamp down from any whistleblowers from emerging on F&F, Benghazi, the IRS, FBI, NSA, et al... Time to go stock up on aluminum foil, I Guess.

31
posted on 06/21/2013 7:08:24 AM PDT
by TADSLOS
(The Event Horizon has come and gone. Buckle up and hang on.)

I so look forward to the day that more than a handful of Freepers have the realization that the GOP was not blind to this or any of the other scandals. We don’t need to ask why dems do this crap. We have long known they are closeted dictators half way out already.

We need to be freaking the hell out as to why it is that the GOP continues to not SAY, much less DO anything about ANY OF IT.

Anyone want to say in public with a straight face the GOP did not know this? Anyone?

Then why do we collectively keep silent about it? We are doing the country or ourselves no favors to defend the people who REFUSE to defend us.

While searching for the pic, I came across this thread at DU, from 2009. They were all in a tizzy about the UK asking nuke workers to "spy" on their coworkers. They must be struck dumb by Snowden's disclosures. Right?

34
posted on 06/21/2013 7:12:10 AM PDT
by schm0e
("we are in the midst of a coup.")

Yo, they are. McClatchy News is about as far left as you can go without falling into the Pacific Ocean. First AP; then The Guardian; then Rolling Stone (until their "leaker" mysteriously was killed); Et tu, McClatche?

In Orwell's 1984 Big Brother and the Thought Police were not concerned with the proles, whom they saw as a mindless rabble. They closely watched the Party Members, the bureaucracy that made their society function. The bureaucrats where on the inside and new how the system really worked, like Winston discovered. They had to be keep on a tight leash because they could expose the lies and denial of reality that Big Brother was based on.

The Hill has the background on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), a group that was created 8 years ago and just last month sawit’s 5th and final member confirmed.

Does this sound like a sham to you?

The panel was first suggested in the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, and was first launched that year. In 2007, the group was granted independent powers, but both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama resisted nominating members for years.

The panel operated without offices or staff for years, and the fifth and final member — Chairman David Medine — was only confirmed last month, by a narrow 53-45 party line vote.

The board still lacks a website, and until Medine’s appointment, had only two federal staffers pulled from other government agencies. It had held only two meetings before a briefing earlier this week, the first since the top-secret NSA programs were revealed by 29-year old defense contractor Edward Snowden.

Still, the White House believes that meeting with the panel can help assuage privacy concerns voiced since the revelation of the NSA programs. The senior administration official said the board’s functions included “ensuring that the need for such actions is balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, Medine said senior officials at the NSA, FBI, and Justice Department explained how some of the NSA programs functioned in a meeting with the five panelists Wednesday.

“Based on what we’ve learned so far, further questions are warranted,” he told the wire service.

Medine also said the group plans a public meeting on July 9, and will publish a report that includes analysis of and recommendations for the NSA programs. By law, the board is required to report to Congress not less than semiannually.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t doubt this kind of thing has always gone on. What’s changed is that we are learning about it all at once and getting a clearer picture of the damage and ugliness.

For a long time I was fixated on terrorism - 9/11 changed me utterly. But the more I’ve discovered since then the less trust I’ve had in the ability of my government to protect me from “enemies, both foreign and domestic”.

I don’t care so much which party is responsible- I care that NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING TO STOP IT.

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